Meta, other tech giants grow India workforce 16% in past year

Global tech firms including Meta, Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, Netflix, and Google have grown their India workforce by 16% over the past year, according to data from staffing firm Xpheno.

These companies now employ over 208,000 people in India, with more than 28,000 net new hires in the last 12 months.

This comes as a contrast to Indian IT services firms, which are seeing workforce reductions.

Tata Consultancy Services, for example, recently announced the layoff of 12,000 mid-to-senior-level employees due to a skills mismatch.

While global tech giants have implemented large-scale layoffs abroad, India has faced a lower impact. Current hiring focuses on skills in AI, cloud, and cybersecurity.

Experts note that hiring is increasingly selective. Demand for routine and support roles is declining, while specialized positions are on the rise.

🔗 Source: The Economic Times

🧠 Food for thought

1️⃣ Skills mismatch creates divergent hiring outcomes for global versus local tech firms

The contrasting hiring patterns reflect a deeper structural issue in India’s tech workforce preparation.

Over 80% of engineering graduates are unemployable in the IT sector due to lack of practical skills, creating a talent shortage even amid high unemployment 1.

This skills gap particularly affects traditional IT service companies like TCS, which laid off 12,000 employees citing “skills mismatch in project deployments,” while simultaneously struggling to find workers qualified for emerging technology roles.

Big Tech companies, with their selective hiring practices and higher compensation budgets, can effectively compete for the limited pool of workers skilled in AI, cloud computing, and cybersecurity.

The Indian tech sector urgently needs over one million high-tech engineers in these specialized fields within the next 2-3 years, but current educational institutions are not producing job-ready graduates at the required scale 2.

This talent scarcity allows global giants to continue expanding their India operations by attracting the best available talent, while local firms face the costly challenge of either retraining existing employees or accepting productivity gaps.